Thursday, 6 April 2017

When one thinks of Twitter the character limit comes into the mind first because users have to express their thought within the set limits. Over the years the use of images, gifs, quotes and links has started to lower the limit of characters left to express one’s thoughts. Twitter is finally taking a stand to bring more opportunity for the users to make the best use of the character limit.

Twitter has launched a limited testing on the iOS platform to see how the new change in the character limit will perform with the audience. But from today onwards Twitter will allow users to mentions other people handle in their replies but it won’t be counted. Users will get a greyed-out line appearing right at the top of the tweet indicating “Replying to [username]’.

The current change made in the character limit is a part of plan announced by Twitter in May 2016 wherein it will slowly allow users to get more of their tweet in varied interesting ways. Twitter is struggling against other major social media platform and it is earnestly looking forward to attract more users to its network.

The Introduction of the Chronological timeline

In the February of this year Twitter brought the entirely chronological timelines for Twitter in a bid help users in catching up with the latest tweets from their favourite users. But as of today only two per cent of the total users have made the shift to this new feature. Twitter is aggressively making changes to the age-old features of its platform to bring something new and exciting for its users. Given the fact that Twitter is going through a stagnant growth period and falling stock prices the sudden changes in the character limit can be seen as a welcome addition.

List of Changes Brought in the Tweeting activity

When a person is using attachment in the tweets which may include either images, photos, videos, GIFs, polls or even quote tweets then it won’t be counted towards the 140 character limit. Secondly a new retweet button will be enabled on the user’s profile to ensure they can tweet their own tweets or people tweet as well share or unlove any older tweet with ease and simplicity. Replying has always been a tedious task in the Twitter but form now on users will get some respite the Twitter handles will not be counted as the character limit.

A number of times we have different Twitter handles mentioned right in the replies and it counts. But rpm now on that wouldn’t be the case rather Twitter handles will appear in greyed-out right at the top of the tweets which label stating ‘Replying to [username]’.

Twitter gives a solemn goodbye to the ‘@’ tweeting culture which has emerged in the recent past. Users were most likely to tag a username right at the beginning of their tweet to get the attention of the concerned person using ‘@’. But from now onwards replies to such tweet will only be seen by the sender or by the followers and simply by the person who is specifically replying to that tweet.

Saturday, 1 April 2017

Tweetdeck Convenient Twitter Experience

Recently the company had mentioned that Twitter Inc. had been planning to build a premium kind of its well-known Tweetdeck interface targeted at professionals thereby raising the likelihood that it would collect subscription fees for the first time, from some users. Tweetdeck provides a much convenient Twitter experience by enabling the user to see various timeline in an easy interface comprising of various advanced features to benefit the most of Twitter.

It also helps in managing numerous accounts, schedule Tweets for future posting build Tweet collections and much more. Similar to the other Twitter applications it interfaces with the Twitter API thus enabling the users in sending as well as receiving tweets and observe profiles. Tweetdeck tends to comprise of sequences of customisable columns that tend to be set up displaying the Twitter timeline of the user, mentions, direct messages, trends, list, search results, hastag, or all the tweets by or to an individual user.

Since its launch 11 years ago, Twitter like most of the other social media companies has focused on building a big user base for a free service with the help of advertising. It had reported last month that it had 319 million users all over the world.

Twitter Unsuccessful in Drawing Adequate Advertising Revenue

However unlike Facebook Inc. Twitter seemed to be unsuccessful in drawing adequate advertising revenue to gain profit in spite of its popularity with Donald Trump, the U.S. President while the other celebrities have made the network an endless hub of attention. A subscription fee could be helpful from a type of Tweetdeck, a prevailing interface which could be beneficialto users in exploringTwitter.

A survey is being done by Twitter to assess the interest in an updated and much more enhanced kind of Tweetdeck according to a spokeswoman Brielle Villablanca in a statement recently. She added that they conduct user research frequently in collecting feedback regarding the user’s Twitter experience as well as to improve their product investment decision.

They have been exploring a number of methods of making Tweetdeck more treasured for professionals. No indications have been provided stating that Twitter would consider charging fees form its users. Announcement of the survey had been disclosed on Twitter earlier wherein a journalist associated with the New York Times had displayed screenshot of what a premium version of Tweetdeck would probably appear like.

Advertising Revenue Progress – Lag User Growth

This kind of version would comprise of more powerful tools enabling marketers, professionals, journalist together with the others in the community to identify of what could be happening across the globe in a quicker manner, as per one of the screenshots displayed on the account @andrewtavani. The description had stated that the experience would be ad-free.

Social media firms like Microsoft Corp’s, MSFT.O, LinkedIn unit, have already tiered memberships together with subscription types which provide better access as well as data. Twitter had posted the slowest revenue growth in the fourth quarter of 2016 since it had gone public four earlier ago where the revenue from the advertising had dropped year after year.

The company had also informed that advertising revenue progress would remain to lag user growth during 2017. Last year, financial markets wondered regarding the sale of Twitter though no concrete bids have come up.

Saturday, 4 March 2017

Trolling on the Twitter has become a nuisance for the common innocent users who have to deal unwanted barrage of abuses and insults. Twitter has boosted its capability which will not allow it to throttle the anonymous trolls right from the user’s timelines. This is regarded as a positive and strong effort on Twitter’s part to put an end to the unwanted barrage of abuses on the social media platform. Twitter introduced a new filtering option which will make it easier and simple for the users to mute accounts without any profile picture as well as email mail addresses and phone numbers.

Twitter is filled with ‘Twitter Eggs’

Currently Twitter is filled with millions of accounts that doesn’t possess any profile pictures and are commonly referred as Twitter eggs. These account holders usually indulge in abusive behavior and trolling activity on the site which has become a chronic problem for the Twitter platform. Currently Twitter is actively working toward identifying such abusive accounts and it will continue looking for such bad eggs without the need of them being reported of other users. In the first phase Twitter will be limiting such accounts for some time during which only its followers will be able to see the tweets.

In later stage a mute feature will be introduced which made its debut in November last year. This mute feature will allow users to block a number of phrases as well as keywords from the notification to keep common users safeguarded from the unwanted trolls and abuses. But the latest update will allow users to directly mute certain words and phrases from their own end to get rid of abusive and unwanted content in their home timeline.

Twitter is gearing up to remove abusive content from its platform

Twitter safety team has a tough week wherein it worked towards bringing such filtering functionalities which can help in limiting the abusive content on the platform. Just a month ago it brought such system which prevents permanently suspended people from creating any new accounts on the platform. A ‘safe search’ is also introduced which removes such Tweets containing any kind of potentially sensitive content from the search results. Finding rogue accounts, people, thwarting sensitive tweets are just a list of simple steps taken by Twitter.

Twitter has stated that it platform support to share different viewpoints but it has to be done without violating the Twitter Rules. Twitter is hoping that the algorithm set in place for varied filtering mechanisms will help acting only against such accounts which support and propagate abusive behavior content on the platform.

Given the fact the tools utilized for this new there might be some mistakes and Twitter is eagerly working towards improving its ability to crack down upon the abusive accounts for once and all. Twitter has even admitted that it has struggled in the past to deal with the online buddies in the past but these filtering features will help in covering the lost ground.

Wednesday, 22 February 2017

Digitalization has both the pros and the cons, it is up to the general mass how they utilize this available technology. We are all aware of the fact that social networking sites are very beneficial in order to stay in touch with those who stay far from us in terms of physical existence but the psychological ties are very strong. But, we need to consider this point that besides this added advantage it also carries a lot of disadvantages that leads to several cyber crimes that has become so frequent these days and people are addressing these social networking sites as abusive instead of considering them as a boon.

Almost every social networking site are experiencing these abuses and in lieu to this Twitter has recently announced certain changes that will protect its users against any piracy. There account and personal details will now be secured against all hacking software. In this way though absolute security is not ensured but the abuses can be curbed to a larger extent.

Twitter has mainly announced three major changes, that will be applicable within few weeks. It is also taking measures to permanently stop granting new accounts to those who have been suspended for any suspicious deed. CEO of Twitter have said that the approach they are opting for is absolutely new and will permit more open spaces to its users.

If any abusive reply on any tweet is discovered then the account from which the comment has come will be discarded. This does not mean that tweets will be removed entirely but the user can control the setting and can take charge of the fact that which tweet will be projected on their accounts. In this the account holder will be responsible for all the activities that are being projected on and from their account.

The users will now be able to block or erase certain words or phrase that they do not find appropriate and hence would not be able to see any notification about any unethical tweet or conversation. In this way anyone who finds any comment uncomfortable can immediately take action against it. You can also use block buttons to completely restrict all sorts of connection with the person you find abusive.

Twitter will also have to look into the issue of lacking interest among the buyers as this would lead to lesser profit and in the long run night cripple the entire working system of this social networking site. News have been reported that Google, Apple as well as Disney were interested but now all the application from twitter is falling on deaf ears as it seems that they are no longer interested in having any exchanges with twitter and to put it correctly the abuses that twitter is facing in terms of its security policy is turning away everyone to get in to any sort of venture with twitter as that might stain their reputation in the industry.

Wednesday, 1 February 2017

Twitter being such a popular social networking site, some are always up to some nuisance regarding this. It has become so popular because as the common mass gets to be acquainted with what is being posted by their favorite stars, whom they always look up to.

So, there is an ardent urge amongst the commoners to be a part of it and for doing so they do not even think one’s before creating a fake account. There are a huge number of fake accounts lobbed at this social networking site. Because of the tight criteria to be an account holder on Twitter people make fake accounts by filling in wrong details about themselves which denotes that how ill-responsible these people are. A research done in UK proved that Twitter which is one of the largest networking site that binds even more than 350,000 and even more, have to encounter such threats.

This is a major problem in the era of social networking and simultaneously where cyber crime is getting increased day by day. It is very difficult to figure out that exactly what number of fake accounts are there, but attempts are being taken to figure out the culprits. One of the computer scientist Juan Echeverria at UCL have unveiled the larger network of fake accounts. His research in this field took a leap by combining thoroughly 1% of the sample of people who use Twitter to get a proper knowledge of how people use this social site.

On further analysis very strange results came out that shocked everyone associated with the research. They discovered that there were several accounts that were linked up together, which suggested that there is a single person who is the master mind of this whole range of fake accounts. It was pretty evident that this work was not the work of a human.

Further discoveries in this field suggest that it is difficult to find out the culprit as they all tend to act differently to even some genuine accounts.

The researchers are now asking the people who use this website and have a twitter account to report immediately if they find any bots as they are so many in number that it is next to impossible for a group researchers to locate all of them. They have suggested nuances to locate these bots as these bots will have created an account recently, they won’t have much followers and will have weird user names and very few messages.

They are likely to share tweets from the places where no human being lives, mostly the messages are dropped from Window phones, they even draw liners from Star Wars Novels. So, these are the traits of having a fake account which every user should take a note on.

The situation has become very oxymoron where the researchers after spotting this huge network of bots go on locating many more, as if there research would never come to an end. This is a serious problem that should be handled intensely.

Monday, 17 October 2016

Twitter is second most popular social media platform after Facebook and it has been getting stiff competition from it when it comes to keep users engaged and entertained on the platform. Recently Facebook has launched the Facebook Live feature which allows users to create live videos and proclaim the happening in their lives to the followers in an instant. Twitter has brought a similar feature on its platform in the name of Periscope which essentially is a live-video service. Periscope services has been launched to broaden the audience reach and to keep audience engaged on the Twitter platform.

Periscope will be a delight for the individuals and media outlets alike

Twitter’s Periscope Producer will allow the media outlets and individuals to create live video feeds which will be uploaded directly on the Twitter. Periscope made its debut last year but it has strictly confined to the smartphone. Now users wouldn’t even require smartphone to record and broadcast live videos using the Periscope feature. In order to test the capability of the advanced Periscope Florida television station broadcasted a live video on its official website later it was redistributed to the same feeds on the television. In beginning Twitter will only allow major producers such as Disney and ANC News along with a number of major media outlets to make use of the Periscope.

Privacy is a huge concern for Twitter

Since the launch of Periscope service people have started using it for broadcasting the live video of TV shows and movies from their smartphone. This has resulted in the unwanted rise in the piracy issue which doesn’t go well with the video content producers such as much labels and movie production houses.

Twitter has high hopes from Periscope Service

Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey has stated that the launch of Periscope will help in increasing the popularity as well as reach of its messaging service. Twitter has already indulged in steaming the news, sports events as well as the entertainment segment based content. Twitter is aiming towards offering more to the users than just offering a great way to set out their thoughts in tweets and to keep tab on the happening in and around them. Dorsey further elaborates that inclusion of the Periscope will offer a great way to upload, share and view live videos on global scales.

Everyone wants to jump on live video wagon

A number of internet companies ranging from SnapChat to Facebook have jumped upon the wagon of bringing live-video functionality on their platform in order to generate huge advertising money later on. Some of the companies have even started to experiment with live streaming functionality for the marketing purpose. This includes General Motors which has launched its upcoming electric car named Chevy Bolt EV through using the Facebook Live at the beginning of this year. On other hand media outlets are utilizing the live video feed to broadcast the presidential debates in US.

With the launch of Periscope Twitter also jumps up in the live streaming train and joins other popular live-streaming services such as Twitch and YouTube.

Thursday, 1 September 2016

Night Mode Added by Twitter to Apps

Night mode has been added by Twitter to its app in an effort that it could be a screening of the next iPhone.The new setting is said to enable the user to turn their background and text contradictory colours which makes the app a dark blue and the writing white.

It could well be a promo of what is in store in the future devices. For instance the iPhone has been rumoured for some time now of getting a night mode across its apps. It would be significant if Apple tends to roll out an OLED screen. OLED screens need to work less hard in producing blacks and which are far richer which means that the designing apps using darker colours assist in preserving the battery life and looks better.

So far, the feature has only been revolved to some apps, only by the developers. Twitter is said to be of the first major apps to provide it. The latest setting can be accessed by going to your own profile on selecting `Me’ tab in the app and click the cog in the top right hand corner. When that’s done, a large list of options tend to come up, one of which will be `turn on night mode’. The feature can also be turned off in the same manner.

Perceive Better While Tweeting in the Dark

The night mode feature enables users to perceive better while tweeting in the dark.The night or dark mode feature tends to ensure that the light which is transmitted from the app on the phone is not severe to the eyes and using a shade which is darker than usual would not have any issue utilising the phone while tweeting at night. It is a good move; in spite of the fact the Twitter app had not a received good rating.

The social media app had announced the new setting update recently along with a gif tutorial on the use of the night mode option. It enables the user to switch their background and text colours, which automatically tends to change the writing to white, while the app tends to turn dark blue making the bedtime tweeting easy on the eyes. The night mode option of Twitter could be what some tech supporters are presuming could be the first hint at a new software changes which seem to be coming for iOS users.

Users to Adhere to Policies

Ever since Apple had first announced its intention of releasing a new iPhone in September, being speculated as iPhone 7, there were rumours circulating that the updated software would come with a new night mode feature across all its apps, especially if Apple uses the new phone to unveil an OLED screen, according to the report of Independent.

Twitter had mentioned that `in order to protect the experience and the safety of people using Twitter, there are some limitations on the type of content and behaviour that is permitted. All users should adhere to the policies set forth in the Twitter Rules and failure to do so could result in the temporary locking and/or permanent suspension of account.

Twitter also added some new feature to curb down harassment, providing more control over what one views and who you tend to interact with. The micro blogging network seems to have ample of work to do in convincing the critics particularly with regards to harassment.

Sunday, 21 August 2016

New Branding Tool – `Promoted Stickers’

Twitter followed Snapchat with the addition of applying stickers with embedded hastags and the business reasoning appears that brands would be capable of providing stickers with their own built-in hastags in order that one could promote for them, enabling them in tracking your stickered tweets.

The initiative of the company’s Promoted #Stickers had been announced in a blog post recently with Pepsi since the special partner as well as the choice was available to `select dealers with accomplished accounts. They are inclined to advertisers as a big opportunity for brands in driving brand affinity together with raising an awareness of their message - `happy brand-affinity driving’.

The search of Twitter of becoming a profitable business which could be utilised by some of the biggest brands in the world is in progress and recently the company has introduced a new branding tool known as `promoted stickers’.

Twitter has named that `promoted stickers’ though basically they are branded sticker, subtly branded stickers. The roll-out is said to be a part of PepsiMoji campaign, which is the soft drink maker launched, providing users in 10 markets admission to custom Twitter stickers.

Stickers Innovative & Searchable

At the moment it is enabling advertisers in providing sponsored sticker that would be appearing up front in the list of stickers which the users could place on their photos. Twitter states that at the moment, `brands could design four or eight stickers such as accessories together with other props, in order that users could add to their own photos.’

Featured in the #Stickers library would be the promoted options, which would provide brands with an opportunity of raising awareness and drive the brand affinity through Twitter. The stickers of Twitter are said to be somewhat innovative where each one is searchable.

As per Twitter, it tends to make it easy for people in creating conversation regarding events and get the experiences of what tends to happen at the moment. #Stickers tend to act as visual hashtag which means that photos with the brand’s sticker could be linked and discovered by anyone who seems to tap your brand’s sticker.

Offering Advertisers Sponsored Stickers

Twitter had reckoned out of making money from a feature cloned from Snapchat less than two months back and is now enabling advertisers in offering sponsored stickers which would be appearing up front in the list of stickers that the users could place on their photos.

The new ad format was recently kicked off with sponsorship from Pepsi that had paid for eight custom stickers, out of which six are strange smiley faces; one is a trophy and just one that has a Pepsi logo on it. Twitter would be permitting advertisers to purchase either four or eight custom stickers at a time which would be appearing in the featured section that tends to appear first at the time of adding them to a photo.

Promoted stickers, just like all Twitter stickers would also be searchable and hence one would be able to click on the Pepsi graphic to see what purpose people seem to be using it. Up to now, it’s to say, `Hi, I am an advertising executive who worked on this Twitter/Pepsi integration’.

Friday, 10 June 2016

Twitter to Roll out Automatic Night Mode Interface

Twitter, the micro-blogging site would shortly roll out an automatic `Night Mode’ user interface UI to its Android app which would replace it with a darker appearance and switch out the white background.The technology website DroidLife lately recounted that the test of the latest feature is occurring among a small number of alpha testers and presently, the usual white background UI with black text is the only choice that is available to the users. 9to5Google had reported that the Night Mode UI stands on top of a Material Design overhaul of app that has been in the process of testing since last month.

The report added that `not only is Twitter testing a `Night Mode’ but also diverse button placements. Twitter is also investigating with hamburger slide-out menus, overflow buttons, as well as floating action buttons – FAB, for the composing of new tweets’. Once implemented, the Night Mode UI would automatically substitute the white background with a dark blue user interface paired with white text making it easy for the eyes during night time. For latest updates on technology, reviews etc. one could follow Express Techie on Facebook or could tweet out to @expresstechie for latest tech news and tips.

Twitter Rolled Out New Connect Tab

Twitter had rolled out a new Connect tab on its mobile apps, earlier this month, in order to make it simple for users to find accounts which could be followed. The feature is made available in the latest app of Twitter on iPhone and Android.

Product manager, Ricardo Castro has mentioned in a blog post, that the tag proposes a list of accounts based on those who had already followed together with the popular ones in the region. Castro stated that `to give you the best recommendations, which will be continued to refine over time, we look at who you have already followed, tweets you like, popular accounts in your local zone, what is happening in the world presently and much more. We would also let you know precisely why we are showing you each recommendation’.

Easy on Eyes during Longer Session of Reading

It is the extra choice that tends to change much of the screen as possible with dark colours thus making it less bright while attempting to read at night or where the brightness of the display tends to be distracting. It could also be easy on the eyes during a longer session of reading like in the case of e-book reader. The choice to changeover between day and night modes is comfortable though seldom provided by main apps.

One could get the effect of it through third party screen dimmer, to some extent, though that could compromise the experience of viewing. Hence it is great news to know that Twitter could be working on a reasonable night mode for mobile apps.

It is said that a darker theme had popped up in the latest Alpha release of the app and the presence of that theme does not mean that we would be definitely getting the option of switching back and forth between various looks for the app though it could be a step in the right course

Sunday, 1 May 2016

Users Can Report Various Abusive Tweets in Single Report

Users now have the privilege of reporting various abusive tweets in a single report after an update to twitter’s harassment rules. Twitter had stated that it required making user feel safe while expressing themselves on the social network. Twitter had mentioned in a blog post announcing the change, that the behaviour which crosses that line into abuse is against the rule and want it to be easy for user to report and have introduced an improvement to reporting process, the ability to attach multiple tweets to a single report.

The update would enable users to add more information regarding the extent of abuse, providing extra context which could be helpful in getting reports resolved quickly. Twitter had regularly come under fire due to its inability to stem the flow of abuse that often tends to take place against the minority groups.

However, steps have been taken in preventing the abuse from recurring both by Twitter as well as by governments. Trolls, in the UK who tend to use false profiles to pester other users would now face prosecution. In Germany, hate speech posted to Twitter, Facebook and Google will now be deleted within twenty four hours.

Not Tolerate Online Behaviour, Intended to Pester Users

Twitter had updated its rules, late last year to a more clearly state, that it would `not tolerate online behaviour which is intended to pester, intimidate or use fear to silence another user’s voice. The update is said to be rolled out on iOS, Android as well as on the web with Twitter stating that it assumes all user would have access to the feature within the next few weeks.

Twitter safety engineer Hao Tang had mentioned in a blog post that this update makes it easier to provide them with more information about the extent of abuse and reduces the time it takes to do so. That added context often helps them to investigate issues and get them resolved faster.

A little over a year ago, the then Twitter Inc. CEO Dick Costolo had admitted to employees in a memo of the company that `we suck at dealing with abuse and trolls’. Twitter’s brisk system of self-expression unluckily tends to facilitate a flood of wandering and disapproving tweets.

Easier to Report Threats to Law Enforcement

Earlier, when a Twitter use would be harassed or saw a user pestering another, abusive tweets had to be reported one at a time which takes six clicks to report a single tweet. Moreover reporting multiple offenses would get labour intensive, and individually reported tweets were not automatically considered part of the same harassment occurrence.

Hao Tang, state that this change would make it easier for the company to understand the extent of abuse some users deal with. The change would be made available on Twitter.com and Twitter’s iOS together with Android apps rolling out to users world-wide over the next few weeks.

This update trails the improvement over the last couple of years which target to make it easier for users of Twitter to report threats to law enforcement and as a rewriting of the company’s violent threats policy, the capability of sharing list of blocked Twitter accounts with other users and the launch of Twitter Safety Centre combining the resources that are available to victims of harassment.

Saturday, 2 April 2016

Twitter is one of the most widely used social networking websites in the world. In order to remain competitive in the highly contested arena of social networking companies has to be find new ways to keep their portal above the rest. On the same thought Twitter has rolled up some new exciting features which are aimed at providing more functionality along with helping the visually impaired audience. Twitter has released the feature to add descriptions to the images in the Tweets. Adding descriptions which is also known as alternative text will help specifically the visually impaired users in understanding the image in a better way.
Twitter new service now widely available

Twitter has promptly made this new available on both Android and iOS platform. Now user from any kind of mobile device will be able to add more information to their pictures within an instant. In order to use this feature users will have to go the app’s accessibility setting and look out for the option called ‘compose image descriptions’. Once this feature is enabled users will be able to see an option to add description for every image they will upload.

It is interesting to note that tweet character limit is still set at 140 characters while Twitter offers 420 characters for writing the picture descriptions. Some experts believe that this is Twitter way of saying you can speak more with an image rather in your tweet. Another feature of this service is that description will have the potential read by the assistive technology such as Braille displays and screen readers.

Tech giants are looking out for the visually impaired in a great manner

Over the years technology advancement has gone through such a rapid phase that we had missed on a number of technology evolutions. Twitter introduction of description for images not just shows how much tech companies cares for the visually impaired population but it also bring focus on the technology which has made it happen. Nowadays smartphones have certain great accessibility features like VoiceOver in the iPhone which offers text readout aloud through gesture support. Google has its own TalkBack which helps visually impaired users in accessing anything on their devices in a simple and smart move.

Twitter’s intention behind bring this new feature

Twitter doesn’t bring new features quite and when it does it serves more than one purpose. Twitter has asserted that they had brought this feature to empower its users and help the visually impaired users in a better fashion. Twitter maintains that photos had been center of some of the greatest moments of the Twitter and new features will help in improving the user’s experience. But a report by Venturebeat suggests that having the accessibility addition on the twitter will help Twitter in identifying the specific tweets much easier than before. This feature will help in improving the Twitter’s search feature which is quite lackluster doesn’t help much. Apart from these Twitter’s new feature will also be available for the third party users and API partners because it will be made available via the Twitter cards and REST API.

Wednesday, 28 October 2015

Program to Search Twitter in Real Time- Doubtful Links in Tweets

Social media sites have now become prone to fraudsters in alluring unwary users having links to financial fraud websites. In order to avoid this, an undergraduate at Harvard University, Daniel Rothchild had created a program which tends to search Twitter in real time, automatically for doubtful links appearing in tweets.

As per results circulated in the Journal of Technology and Science, his program discovered over 70,000 suspicious tweets within 24 hours with about 56% of the tested links considered to be deceitful. The most tweeted deceitful link to a purported weight loss program had been tweeted over 12,000 times where all of the top 10 most tweeted links were said to be fake.

A 2014 survey, a joint project by the UK government, a Get Safe Online initiative, the National Crime Agency and the telecoms regulator Ofcom and others, observed that about 51% of Britons who had been surveyed were the victims of identity theft, hacking or abuse on social media and the losses from online fraud amounted to £670m a year.

In several cases, fraudsters tend to entice the users to websites they may have set up for the purpose of collecting their personal or financial information to present them with advertisement which tend to make deceptive offers.

Social Media – Tool to Connect with Victims

Considering the massive growth in popularity of social media, fraudsters tend to use social media as new tool to connect with the victims. There are various advantages to proactively find and monitor fraudulent websites.

At first, data, collected in this manner is unbiased by whether the user of various kind of fraud intend to report or not. There are some frauds which are under reported with many targeting specific demographics and those which are reported do not necessarily represent those who seem to be heavily targeted. Secondly, fraudsters often put up, take down or move their fraudulent websites on short timescales, probably to dodge detection.

Monitoring social media data constantly could enable consumer protection groups to be conscious of fraudulent websites quicker than otherwise. Lastly having a complete record of deceitful activity on social media could show evidence to the law enforcement while pursuing fraudster trying to conceal the extent of their fraud.

However, Rothchild’s procedure tends to turn cyber-criminals’ tools against them to proactively find areas of criminal activity before they get started.

Create Browser Extension to Alert Users

In order to help user in protecting themselves, Rothchild recommend that it would be possible in creating a browser extension which would alert users when they click on a link through Twitter which tends to be automatically identified by the tool as being suspicious.

He wrote a Python script to locate for keywords in Twitter’s real time stream and the keywords were termed loosely connected with common forms of fraud. These included muscle, diet, acai, cambogia, weight, lost fast and miracle pill that were taken from a report on online fraud that was published by the US regulatory body Federal Trade Commission.

They identified many terms that could have be associated with fraudulent offer. They included diet, exercise, weight, weight-loss, prize, lottery, sweepstakes and winner.

The precise option of keywords did not matter since it could be swapped to utilise any keywords and would be suspected of being connected with fraud. The procedure searched for precise links tweeted strangely large number of times, which indicated that a bot rather than a human was behind it.

Monday, 15 June 2015

After the seven days of Boston marathon bombing, a group of hackers release a bogus tweet from the official account of Associated Press which was containing a message that “Breaking News: Two Explosions in the White House and it if found that Barack Obama is injured”. Before some organizations such as; Associated Press or White House could clarify the false statement, the stock market of NYSE responds very fast and within minute it record the drop of 140 pints, where millions of people lose billions of dollars.

Stock market recovered very fast, but analyst stated that there was a chance of long time frame which was enough for hackers to make a good some of money through trading. We all knew that rumors and the negative effects of rumors spread very fast in hyper-connected times as per the statement of Qiaozhu Mei, who is Associate professor in Information and Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan School. To deal with these kinds of situations Prof. Mei and team of researchers have developed software which will help the society by identifying the rumors and correcting the erroneous claims on Twitter.

This software was introduced at the International World Wide Web Conference, Italy. But in the summers of 2015 they tested it live on the website which they are developing and named it as the Rumor Lens. Sometimes we found there are few posts on the social media which are spreading beyond the control of anyone and due to that our goal is to detect the emerging rumors in very less time, said Mei, who is an expert on text mining process and the processing of natural language.

The whole team demonstrated the capacity of software and for that they had done the analysis of two sets of tweets: First; a random sample of more than 1.2 billion tweets of November 2013 and Second; 30 million tweets related to the Boston Marathon bombing. In the sample testing they collected the second set from Twitter's Gardenhose with 10 per cent of its real time stream however; data was representing the unpredictable as well as high-profile events which was the rumors with less span of time.

In the whole process software correctly detected more than 110 rumors and about the Boston Marathon bombing, so after the testing software find more than 50 per cent accuracy on an average. The percentage of accuracy in both sample testing was higher than the 10 per cent accuracy of hastag and trending topic tracking rumor detection process. Researchers pointed out that there software are so fast in identifying the fishy statements. Prof Mei, stated that our method can detect the rumors 3.5 hours earlier than other methods which use hastag tracking and trending topics.

Rumor Lens is the sites of researches and it is expected that site will be available in the couple of months. In the statement researchers define the rumors as a controversial statement.

Thursday, 23 April 2015

In the recent push to generate the more revenue, leading micro-blogging site Twitter is building up its own business in the areas such as; commerce and advertising however; on last Friday company sets its move in another area which is big data analytics. Whereas; twitter has announced that soon it is going to terminate the agreements with all other third parties to resale the Firehose data, which is complete stream of Tweets which is related to metadata.

Not onwards Twitter, will use its own in-house based team for big data analytics, which is developed after the acquisition of Gnip in the year 2004, and now seek to develop the direct and most effective relationship with big brands, data companies and others to measure the latest market trends and the analysis of consumer sentiment with other trends which can be better understood by tracking the online behavior of users.

DataSift is one of the biggest companies which will be affected by the latest move of Twitter services, unfortunately this move is quick and DataSift was unable to post their own reaction on the issue of termination.

However; NTT Data, which is one of the company which deals in the Tweets of Japanese language is still listed as the Firehorse partner of Twitter at the time of announcement, but after few days the sources of Twitter has confirmed that NTT Data will be also affected by Friday’s announcement.

As per the statement of Nick Halstead, who is CEO of and founder of DataSift, My company was blindsided by Twitter’s announcement and this announcement was without any warning to DataSift. The more he added that we are discussing the renewal of the deal however; after being the Firehorse partner of Facebook and Twitter’s, it will not impact the business discussions.

However discussion is still I the middle of negotiations as Twitter wants them to be the partner of an open ecosystem. The all you can analyze by the last year move of Twitter when it has acquired the Gnip, which is one of the Firehose reseller and now competed against the DataSift.

The main reason behind the acquisition of Gnip was that Twitter believes that the best way to support the distribution of data of Twitter is to have its data customers with direct data relationships as most of the big data analysis is using the Twitter’s data and its analysis for developing the analytic solutions. Acquisition of Gnip was the first step of Twitter to develop he direct relationships with its data customers.

It’s clear that now social networking platforms are looking for more clear ways to use the data for analytics that seems an obvious process to do that. Still DataSift can work with Twitter. If any of the third party will buy data of Tweets from Twitter and they can supply it to DataSift to develop the new algorithms. Currently, company is in the process to raise a series of new funding as till now they have raised about $ 78 million.

Monday, 6 April 2015

Twitters’ latest live-streaming iOS app Periscope has been upgraded to display broadcast from individuals, who would want to follow it more conspicuously. The latest app tends to display broadcast from people you follow at the top of the feed making it easier to locate from the various streams of other Periscope users. Besides this, follower notifications by default are also turned off.

The company has informed that they are working on adding more granular control to enable only alerts which could be of importance. Moreover, one also has the option of sharing location before broadcasting and if one discloses the whereabouts, the map display gives a less accurate indication of your location on a zoomed out view on the map.

A confirmation from Periscope has been received that it is working on Android version of its app. Periscope, the newly released live streaming app periscope which was released offers a straight forward means of streaming live video to any user who tends to tune in or only to those who may be invited.

While using Periscope for the first time, should there arise a mishap, it would be mean inviting the others to view a live stream of personal video of home or the bathroom trip and users need to learn a few more details before using the app.

First Visit – Permission to Access Camera/Microphone/Location

On signing in and following other users, one is taken to the apps feed where you will find current live streams from friends and other users all across the globe. On scrolling to the bottom of the feed, the user will come across older feeds which are hosted by Periscope and when a feed ends, the person streaming could make the choice of leaving the feed for a maximum of 24 hours or it could immediately be removed.

On tapping on a stream in the feed you have the liberty to watch it. When the stream selected is loading, basic information from where the stream originates, list of fellow viewers and buttons to follow the user is provided.

If one intends to leave a stream, they could either tap on the X in the upper right hand area or swipe down just like the pull to refresh gesture. You could start a stream on tapping on the camera button placed at the bottom of the screen.

On the first visit to this section of the app, users are asked to permit Periscope access to the camera, microphone as well as the location and on granting permission, user could start streaming.

End Stream Button

The first step is to give the stream a title and then decide if one would want to include the location of the stream and permit everyone to see your stream or else you would only want to invite a selected few to view it. Finally the user can have Periscope send a tweet on behalf of the user publicising your stream.

One can view comments as they come along, while on air together with the viewer count and with a double tap on the screen it will toggle the active camera. If the back camera is being utilised, a double tapping on the screen could change to the front facing camera and you have the liberty of switching back to the rear camera with another double tap.

To end a stream you could do with the same downward gesture used to leave a stream and tap on the End Stream button.

Thursday, 29 January 2015

For the first time during a football championship, Super Bowl Facebook is deploying an all-new marketing gaming plan which will help companies to purchase ads in real time. Facebook earlier had sold Super Bowl ads based on user’s prevailing likes, profiles as well as demographic information.

This made it the first time that the site would be using new targeting features which would customize audience clusters for advertiser, as briefing with regards to the game is revealed. According to Reuters, video ads for instance, triggered by using certain keywords which members would mention in their post on Facebook, while watching the American football game, would automatically begin to play within the user’s news feeds.

Twitter’s platform has already been in real-time marketing for years but the strategy represents a first for Facebook. Tablets and smartphones have provision of a second screen for the Super Bowl’s 100 million television audience to comment, regarding the proceedings of the game, giving advertisers an appropriate option to target messages.

Twitter – Mantel of Real-Time Platform

Twitter has owned the mantel of a real-time platform though the sophistication of Facebook’s ad targeting is unparalleled, according to Noah Mallin MEC, head of social for North America, a media buying agency and a part of WPP. Twitter has been leading in this arena which other social media networks are seeking to match up with.Super Bowl marketers on Facebook, last year, couldaim ads to segment of members depending on their likes, demographic information and profiles and Facebook had introduced real-time targeting features thereafter.

The social network this year with around 155 million daily users in United State as well as Canada could customize audience clusters which advertisers could target in real-time at the time of the game. According to the head of social media at the marketing agency Eleven Inc.

Maura Tuohy, states that Facebook had to work hard to dispel the notion that people do not use the network while watching live tent pole events and that people are talking about the shows on Facebook.

Need of Strong Presence – Online/Mobile

According to the director of traditional and emerging media at Toyota, Dionne Colvin-Lovely, comments that the automaker is running two commercials at the time of the Super Bowl though has turned to digital platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Inc.’s YouTube as well as Hulu in order to generate a conversation around car buyers. Colvin-Lovely further adds that the TV is an important media which is not much dominant and there is a need to make sure of a strong presence, online as well as well in mobile.

For the Super Bowl, Twitter has been staffing `war rooms’ of 13 advertisers which includes PepsiCo as well as Anheuser Busch, triple the number of companies who worked directly with Twitter for the big game last year. Both Facebook and Twitter are speculating that by executing memorable real-time ads with a more concrete way in reaching consumers, would be an additional advantage in their long-time efforts to have a bigger slice of the estimated $66 billion television advertising profits. Several marketers are also turning to digital platforms which also include YouTube.

Wednesday, 29 October 2014

The success and popularity of the social networking sites like Twitter or also Facebook depends totally on the achievement of those persons who develop many interesting and ideal apps since apps are the most significant part of these sites.

For example, Facebook has obtained a huge number of users due to the social games created by Zynga Inc. Furthermore, the services on the site of Twitter have achieved usability owing to the thousands of applications. These apps permit the public to shorten the web links, display photos and even utilize the Smartphone to get the service.

There are already more than million of apps all over the world that want technical maintenance to stay up and operate, and long-term business policy of Twitter is to endow developers with the necessary tools to make cash from their apps and prevent them from crashing.

A conference for the App makers to launch tools-

Few years ago, Twitter developed some firm rules and regulations regarding the apps development in social media and as a result, it annoyed many developers. But, recently Twitter has brought out some attractive news for those developers by arranging a conference for them. It is going to declare a new set of tools for the app makers.

The social network was stocking up on the developer-based tools over the previous 18 months, holding the startups such as Crashlytics that helps the makers to debug and check new apps. If app makers utilize Crashlytics to analyze and fix their app, they are more probably to use MoPub to promote on it. And in the future, when Twitter releases the best, pricier versions of those tools, the present customers will probably upgrade.

The new service of the tools will be given though a last platform known as Fabric. Fabric that is free, will provide developers a channel to report troubles in the development procedure by means of Crashlytics The tools will incorporate some things from Crashlytics. It is a crash-reporting tool that is used by different companies to know when their apps would crash on the customer devices and it was acquired by Twitter in the year 2013.

Main Goal of Twitter

But, this meeting with the developers will not be to promote the mobile manufacturers to build on this social networking site. The discussion in the conference will be more like a general conversation. The focus in this conference will be mainly to create a good relationship with the app makers by offering them some free tools so that Twitter will be able to earn some profit in this context.

Ryan Sarver, who is an associate of Redpoint Ventures and an ex- director of Twitter mentioned about the same thing. He also said that a new type of service from this social media sites is pleasing to all of the mobile makers, it can create a good bond with further some more developers in the future. He did not speak clearly enough early on concerning which apps it aimed to make and which it wished developers would create. Twitter must make reliable apps for the sake of the users.

However, the relationship became controversial in August of 2012 while Twitter implemented some severe necessities for third-party apps and basically ordered apps which would be capable to flourish in the future years. The company was attempting to take control over the user experience and starting to build features that had been created by external developers.

Saturday, 20 September 2014

Twitter appears as one of the popular social sites that connect the world enabling you to communicate with the persons at any part of the world.

Recently, Twitter announced the change in fonts and the color options that you can explore while using the social site. The users can ascertain multiple color options in their profile which you need to implement properly creating a suitable page.

Moreover, the altered font improves the overall speed along with the enhanced readability features. Alongside, you can find the new buttons that include the suitable opportunities carrying out the profile activities efficiently without any interruption.

Get Familiar With the Changes

Installing the app, you can even use Twitter on Android and other smart devices that allows you to get access to the essential information through the particular social site.

Furthermore, you can comprehend the feasible fonts that reveal the opportunity of the specific options. Therefore, you can gain the popularity on Twitter that conveys your identity online. Therefore, to experience the real time changes you need to log in to your Twitter profile where you can discover the new features related to fonts and colors.

You can pick up a new color for your profile that would enhance the popularity and you can start receiving better responses on Twitter. However, you need to pay attention while creating a new identity ensuring that you choose the right options.

Utilize the new fonts and wrote something new for your profile that would grab the attention of the other users.

Go Through the Online Articles

The new users who are planning to create a Twitter profile can go through the information displayed online knowing the entire process and other useful details. Hence, you can eliminate the doubts knowing the feasible ways through which you need to proceed.

After you acknowledge the important data regarding the features, you create your own profile recognizing the practical benefits on Twitter. Also, you can ascertain the other effective outputs that represent the real usability of the site.

Make sure that you comprehend the complete system and carry out the procedure efficiently recognizing the recent updated features. However, while reading the articles and the comments you can discover both positive and negative feedbacks that may be confusing. So, you need to practically experience the features understanding the outputs that you receive in the recent times.

Know the Functionality of the Buttons

Finally, after you create the profile you should know the accurate functionalities of the particular buttons that you need to use to accomplish the bustles.

Therefore, it is important to evaluate the entire system along with the performance of the buttons that helps you to accomplish the activities at your ease. Get a real time view of the new profile that accumulates the suitable colors and fonts according to your needs.

Ensure that you implement the attributes in the proper way that suits your entire profile. Finally, you are able to connect to the entire world using Twitter as the suitable social platform.

Thursday, 11 September 2014

Apart from being the real time emporium for photos, news, videos and 140-character snippet for thought, Twitter, the real time social network, is now moving towards becoming a virtual shopping mall for products.

Twitter at the start of the September did announce that they are planning to work on testing a “buy” button, which only can be embedded within a post, but also will allows user to purchase products with just few clicks.

Currently the site relies virtually on advertising for their income, but with this new feature Twitter can generate a new stream for revenue. Currently this feature is expected to be limited to the mobile version of Twitter and it is aiming at selling out only time sensitive or limited editions items like T-shirts and movie tickets.

Currently the e-commerce based on mobiles is highly competitive and the test is coming at a highly intensified state of the e-commerce world. Apple on the other hand also is expected to unveil their new iPhone which has phone-based payment feature (NFC). Twitter’s arch rival, Facebook, already started working on the buy button concept in their service in July.

Social network which includes Pinterest (visual book) consider e-commerce as a potential moneymaker. Even though none of these companies have been able to successfully introduce any new purchasing technology on wider scale; each of these companies has been working on making purchase an easier option from their respective sites. With many of the company’s marketing their products on Twitter and Facebook through messages, the online sales revenue is expected to be in billions of dollars. These companies not only promote their products but also provide user and external link to visit the respective site to make purchase.

Now these companies have taken shopping a step ahead and trying to offer the customers option wherein they can purchase product by clicking on the advertisement instantly. This will not only allow these sites to charge the user a transaction fee but also ensure that the user stays on their website.
In contrary to the previous attempts made by Twitter with e-commerce companies like Amazon, the users don’t need to send any public message with hash tag to buy anything, instead they can just click on the “buy” button to proceed with the transaction. Once the user clicks on the buy button, the service will prompt them to enter the delivery address and payment detail and ask them to confirm the transaction.

According to Nathan, who leads Twitter’s commerce efforts, they have given a website which help one to connect with the things that you adore. To make is more additive, add the transaction experience for the user. The testing of the buy button is expected to be restricted to small user group in America and will feature only 19 entities including musician etc. Even though the idea of certain types of products for sale was unclear, but they knew that anything that has a sense of urgency will be an attraction. It’s about offering user unique products.

Tuesday, 9 September 2014

When the social site giant Twitter Inc. believes in ‘more people, more fun’ concept, offering new feature for much easy access is very much expected then.
The prime contender of Facebook Inc. has reportedly opening up its tweet analytics service for every user. Notably, Twitter has introduced this feature
earlier this year, but only advertisers and verified Twitter account holders were eligible to get the feature. Now the company has decided to give its
access to all the users gradually. Tweet Analytics Dashboard is a pretty cool tool which helps users to track the performance of their tweets, their
account. So, in another word, this tool is a popularity meter for users.

How Twitter Dashboard works:
With Twitter Dashboard tool, users can evaluate their twitter performance and will be able to learn more about their tweets. Such as-

Users can check how their tweets are engaging new people in real time,

Can compare tweet performance on monthly basis and can check how their tweets played as trends over time,

Upon clicking a tweet, the dashboard will give every information about that tweet, including number of retweets, favourites, replies, follows or click it
received.

Also the users will be able to download the tweet metrics.

Though the company has assured to offer this service to each user over Twitter platform, but right now any account older than 14 days can avail the offer.
Also, according to the press release, users, who primarily tweets in English, Spanish, French and Japanese will get this feature. Those, fulfilling the
criteria, can avail the service simply by logging into analytics. twitter.com with their username and password.

How to use the Dashboard:

Follow these simple steps to use the dashboard.

Click on any tweet to get a charts containing all details about that tweet, which includes number of retweets, replies, follows etc.

The same chart will show how many times that tweet got clicked and how it engaged with people.

Download the tweet metrics in a CSV file.

Dashboard keyword definitions:

Once you are well-known with the dashboard terminologies, then you are good to go. Here are the list of those keywords.

§ Engagement rate: This shows number of engagements divided by impressions.

§ Favourites: This number reflects how many times a user made his tweet favourite.

§ Follows: This number tells how many times a used followed you via your tweet.

§ Hashtag clicks: This number gives idea about how many times the hashtag in a tweet got clicked.

§ Impressions: How many times a used posted a tweet on timeline.

§ Replies and Retweets: This number tells you the number of retweets and replies a tweet got.

According to the company spokesperson, with tweet metrics and engagement metrics, which shall be updated in few seconds, the users will enjoy every bit of
it to guess their popularity in real time. Before searching for the dashboard, just keep in mind that the account should fulfil all the criteria.